Pixel shading may be used in graphics processing architectures to determine the color, brightness and other visual parameters of the pixels in an image presented on a display. To allow shading at a lower rate than once per pixel, the notion of coarse pixel shading may be used. A coarse pixel (CP) may generally be a group of pixels that share a single coarse pixel shader (CPS) evaluation. Currently, the size of a CP may be either flat/constant for an entire screen or a variable vertex attribute that is interpolated and quantized. Coarse pixel shading may have a lower resolution (e.g., detail) of shading compared to pixel shading. Therefore, coarse pixel shading may enable a tradeoff between shading detail and energy savings (e.g., power reduction).